Costa book awards winners 2011 – in pictures

Costa book awards winners 2011 – in pictures

This year's individual category winners have been announced for the prestigious awards, with some surprises among them. The overall winner will be announced on January 24: Now's your chance to catch up with the contenders

Wednesday 4 January 2012 06.50 EST
First published on Wednesday 4 January 2012 06.50 EST

Costa novel award - Pure by Andrew Miller

On the eve of the French revolution, the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris is overflowing, poisoning the city around it. A young engineer is charged with the grand Enlightenment project of exhuming the bodies and demolishing the church. But shadows of the past prove harder to budge than he expected
What the judges said: “A structurally and stylistically flawless historical novel, this book is a gripping story, beautifully written and emotionally satisfying. A novel without a weakness from an author who we all feel deserves a wider readership.”
Read reviews of PureInterview: Andrew Miller

Costa poetry award - The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy Duffy's first collection since her appointment as poet laureate offers a joyful grab-bag of form and subject, mixing the lyric with the deadpan, the political with the elegiac - and all buzzed about with the bees of the title
What the judges said: “We were thrilled by the poet’s musical feeling for language and her spellbinding ability to combine naturalness and formal complexity. It’s a joyful collection.”
Read reviews of The Bees

Costa first novel award - Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson

When her parents split up, 12-year-old Blessing is uprooted from her comfortable life in Lagos and moved to her mother's village in the Niger Delta, where she finds that the warmth of family life endures despite desperate poverty and the depredations of big oil. "It takes the reader deep into the reality of ordinary life in Nigeria and is also funny, moving and politically alert", said Giles Foden
What the judges said: “This book was our unanimous winner. Readability and literary merit go hand in hand in this vibrant gem of a novel.”
Read our review of Tiny Sunbirds Far Away

Costa biography award - Now All Roads Lead to France by Matthew Hollis

The final five years of Edward Thomas’s life, before he made the fatal journey to fight in the first world war, were notable for his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost. With walk-on parts for characters such as WB Yeats, Ezra Pound and Rupert Brooke, this acclaimed debut biography, from a writer best known as a poet, evokes a key moment in English literature on the cusp of catastrophic change.
What the judges said:“Dramatic and engrossing. A brilliant biography that moved us all.”
Read reviews of Now All Roads Lead to France

Costa children's book award - Blood Red Road by Moira Young

The first in a planned dystopian trilogy for teens, this searing debut has been compared to Cormac McCarthy and optioned by Ridley Scott. It tells the story of Saba's epic quest to get her beloved twin brother back after he is captured in an apocalyptic monster sandstorm. Teaming up with a gang of girl revolutionaries she finds she has the power to change a corrupt society from the inside - and change the course of her own civilisation along the way.
What the judges said: “It’s astonishing how, in her first novel, Moira Young has so successfully bound believable characters into a heart-stopping adventure. She kept us reading, and left us hungry for more. A really special book.”
Read an extract from Blood Red Road